Hurricane Sandy ranks among the most damaging storms to hit the Poconos in recent memory, according to local officials.

"At landfall, it was the most powerful hurricane to hit our region since 1936, based on its size and strength," said Paul Canevari, spokesman for PPL Electric Utilities, which serves Monroe, Pike and 27 other counties.

Monroe, Pike, Wayne, Carbon, Northampton, Lehigh and Bucks counties were among Pennsylvania's hardest-hit areas in terms of power outages, according to Canevari and Met-Ed spokesman Scott Surgeoner.

In Monroe County, more than 70,000 people — or more than 41 percent of the county's population — were without power for an extended period of time, said Guy Miller, director of the county Office of Emergency Services.

PPL estimates the storm-recovery costs to total between $70 million and $80 million, including labor, housing and feeding expanded 24/7 staffing for longer than a week, plus materials and equipment, Canevari said.

"The storm restoration costs for Sandy alone exceed those of the three major storms from 2011 (including Irene and the October snowstorm)," he said.

As of Thursday, Monroe County had assessed 200 structures, including mobile and single-family homes and businesses, for property damage, but was still compiling figures to come up with a final total amount of damage, Miller said.

"The county has spent just over $400,000 on response and recovery efforts by the county," Miller said. "This is an approximate number for a few different reasons, mainly because some recovery efforts are still taking place."

A little over a month since Sandy battered the region, the Pocono Record asked authorities to assess what lessons they've learned.

This is what they said.

"It was difficult keeping track of so many state and local road closures and reopenings to gather accurate information. Many out-of-state residents burdening our local fuel supply stations, plus the delay of fuel supplies, led to fuel hoarding and dangerous fuel transportation issues with the public.

"We'd like residents to reach out and help each other in the future, and more people to volunteer with the Red Cross and county response and recovery operations."

Guy Miller

Director, Monroe County Office of Emergency Services

"We didn't know how long any power outages would last. Upon request, we opened one centralized megashelter at East Stroudsburg University, as opposed to multiple shelters, but our resources were still stretched.

"The OES granted us some of their space when our Stroudsburg office lost power for six days, but we now have donated funding to buy a generator for our office."

Jim Rienhardt

Executive director, American Red Cross of the Poconos

"We served fewer meals to fewer people after Sandy than we did after Irene, but the power outages and problems from Sandy lasted much longer.

"All in all, things operated very smoothly with the Red Cross."

James Gingrich

Major, East Stroudsburg Salvation Army

"The damage was much more significant from Sandy, in terms of the numbers of poles, transformers and wires as well as downed trees, than from Irene and the October 2011 storm combined.

"We're still critiquing our reaction to Sandy. We'll apply whatever lessons we learned from the recent public forum in Bushkill for future storms.

"We'll seek reimbursement for damages through the state Public Utilities Commission. We'll have to discuss with the PUC how this may or may not affect what we charge our customers. The rates did not change after Irene or the October 2011 storm."

"There were many areas with significant devastation. With more than 4,600 individual repairs, it was immensely challenging to determine accurate restoration times for each case.

"Other challenges included getting accurate damage assessments on the entire system to most effectively plan field operations, and the logistics of mobilizing such a larger-than-typical workforce for this event.

"We'll apply lessons learned to our playbook in continuing to improve on ramping up staffing for major storms and addressing the logistics of such staffing, communicating with the public and coordinating with other agencies."

Paul Canevari

Spokesman, PPL

"We are currently reviewing our county emergency operations plan to see what adjustments may need to be done.

"We are looking at how the county may assign various county departments and agencies to cover some of the 15 emergency service functions that are key to emergency management.

"During Sandy, we did have a pretty good group of people manning the EOC from various outside groups, but perhaps there are others that could assist or should assist.

"There has also been some offers from a few municipal leaders to form a group within the county that could potentially serve as a basis for a county incident support team which could assist their neighboring municipalities.

"We are also looking at some ways to better use social media — Facebook, Twitter, etc. — and to make information from the county level a little more readily available."

Roger Maltby

Director, Pike County Emergency Management

Road closures were as widespread and problematic as downed wires and power outages.

"If a tree is on wires, our folks can go close the road, but we cannot open the road until the tree is removed from the wires by trained utility workers or their contractors. We try to coordinate with the power companies as much as possible."

During Hurricane Sandy, PennDOT had employees stationed at the Monroe County Public Safety Center in Snydersville getting the latest updates on where trees and downed wires were located.

Although PennDOT did have all available crews working 12-hour shifts during the storm, it did not bring in crews from outside the area.

Sean Brown

Spokesman, PennDOT

Generators are one thing school officials are talking about following Hurricane Sandy.

"We are definitely going to look at generators for some of our buildings that don't have generators, but that doesn't necessarily mean we would have been able to have school," said John Toleno, Stroudsburg superintendent.

"The generators would have saved us from having to transfer food out of our freezers so that we don't lose the food," he said.

East Stroudsburg Area School Board members recently approved the purchase of several generators to run exterior freezers at the J.T. Lambert School and Resica Elementary School.

The $75,000 project also includes generators for the bus garages at the South and North high schools.

The generators for the freezers will help the district preserve its food in the event of a power outage, and the generators for the garages will ensure that bus drivers can fuel buses without power, said Eric Forsyth East Stroudsburg district director of administrative services.

Although it lost power, Forsyth said the district didn't lose any of its food.

Depending on where you live, you may have thought WSBG 93.5 FM and The Bone 107.1 were off the air for a week in the aftermath of Sandy.

But it was less than a day, just until the station had power restored.

However, power at the stations' transmitter in a remote location off Route 191 was another story. That took more than a week to restore because of downed power lines, and while it was running on a generator, the signal was much weaker than usual.

That meant people in more remote areas of the county — like Bushkill, Blakeslee, Gilbert — might not have heard the stations for a week, leaving many with battery-powered radios in the dark about what was going on.

"You don't expect the power to be out that long," said the stations' program director, Rod Bauman. "We were in the same situation as everyone else, just waiting for the power to come back on."

At Pocono 96.7 FM, the story was the same.

"What we learned was that everybody is vulnerable, and cellular service can, and will, fail," said Bud Williamson, owner of Neversink Media, which owns 96.7.

Williamson said as he was driving the station's van to the gas station to refuel for the station's generator, people stopped him looking for whatever information they could get.

He didn't have much, which taught him another lesson — to be in better communication with local officials on what is going on in an emergency situation.

"Maybe we can't get that information from the power company, but people at the (county emergency center) can," he said. "We've already started building relationships for that."

Hurricane Sandy knocked out power to thousands of Pocono residents, and also knocked out power supplies to cell towers around the region.

That left residents who rely on cell service not just for phone but also for Internet access without a way of contacting anyone for help.

The widespread crisis was enough for U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York to call on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate how the large-scale loss of cell communications happened, and to find ways to make sure it doesn't happen again.

"Unimpeded cellphone service is a necessity for emergency workers and a lifeline for residents left without power," Schumer said in a Nov. 19 letter to the FCC.

"After Sandy hit, far too many impacted residents struggled to get service because far too many cell towers were rendered inoperable. In an age where many people only have cellphones, the bottom line is we must fix that problem ASAP."

Both Verizon Wireless and AT&T officials said all their towers are back up and running.

AT&T officials said there are no new plans post-Sandy, but said it will continue to enhance network redundancy with additional backup and permanent generators at cell towers, switch facilities to more reliable ones, and put critical equipment in less vulnerable areas.

Verizon Wireless spokesman Sheldon Jones said about 95 percent of Verizon cell tower sites from Maine to Virginia stayed online during the storm, though there were "bigger challenges" in the hardest-hit areas.